NEW ORLEANS, LA.- In an online betting match that
began via Twitter, museum directors Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren
Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), and E. John
Bullard, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director and CEO of the New Orleans Museum
of Art (NOMA), have agreed to a three-month loan of a
significant work of art to the museum in the city whose NFL team wins the Super
Bowl on February 7, 2010. If the Indianapolis Colts win, NOMA will loan
the landscape painting “Ideal View of Tivoli”, 1644, by French artist Claude
Lorrain to the IMA. If the New Orleans Saints win, the IMA will loan “The Fifth
Plague of Egypt”, 1800, a landscape by British artist J.M.W. Turner to NOMA.